The reason for the recent lack of updates is I have been away on
holiday. I hope to do an update soon but have a huge amount of email to check through plus
have limited time available due to Christmas social events.

*** Very Important ***If you have sent email to me at <any_address>@cricketgames.com and it
has bounced please resend it using cricketgames@btinternet.com
I am having email problems with the provider of CricketGames.com who are bouncing email
incorrectly. This is very frustrating but should hopefully be resolved soon. The problem
has been going on for some time now so please do resend any emails where you got an error
message. If you did not get an error message then I did get the email (some does get
through).Updated CricketGames.com Shop - you can now order International Cricket Captain 2000 for £25.49.

I know this is beginning to sound like a broken record but I'm
really sorry for the lack of updates in the last few weeks. This is because I am very busy
working on International Cricket Captain 2000
(PC). Hopefully soon normal service can resume.

Updated Competition - extended closing date to any day
now! i.e. Entries still will be accepted but the closing date could be any time now. Note
to those people who have already entered don't email me asking if you have won or when the
draw will be made as all that is likely to happen is your entry will be removed.

Sorry for the downtime of CricketGames.com. This was due to a
dispute between myself and my provider CI
Hosts. It grew out of a mis-undestanding of a bandwidth charge. Whilst I am allowed
unlimited bandwidth for the site this does not include download files and I had too many
downloads last month. This means I am going to have to locate downloads elsewhere which I
am in the process of doing.

My downtime also included all email being bounced so if you sent me
an email that bounced please resend it as I should now get it.

Because of the downtime I have had very little time to update the
site this weekend. Most updates will now have to wait until next weekend.

Created a new web site - The Cricket Files and
moved over 40 Mb of downloads on to it to reduce my downloads ratio. All links here on
CricketGames.com should still work. If any don't please let me know.

I have had just one entry for the CricketGames.com Telegraph
Cricket League Competition to win Internet
Test Cricket :-( This is very disappointing. Am I wasting my time? Please consider
entering or I will have to cancel the league which would be a shame.

I have not had one single entry for the CricketGames.com Telegraph
Cricket League Competition to win Internet
Test Cricket :-( This is very disappointing. Am I wasting my time? I have now added an
online link to the players details as listed in the Telegraph.

Sorry for the recent lack of updates but this is due to me being
based in London during the week working on International Cricket Captain 2000 (PC).
Hopefully next weekend (earliest I can update again) I can manage to add some of the stuff
I have been sent in the last few weeks. ** UPDATE ** Managed to add a few more items in a
second update today.

Empire
have a couple of vacancies on their programming team for International Cricket Captain 2000 and
future games in the series. If you are passionate about cricket and a good C++ programmer
this could be the ideal job for you. If you are interested in this position please send
details of your programming skills (CV), availability and cricketing knowledge. If you
have written any cricket games (or other games) please send details. Do NOT
send in samples of work (unless cricket games) until requested. Knowledge of 3D would be
useful but not essential. The International Cricket Captain team have their own dedicated
offices in central London. I am already working for Empire so can answer any questions you
may have or forward them to the relevant people.

I have now had another correct answer to the CricketGames.com Competition to win Internet Test
Cricket. I would like to stress though that the correct answer is not my date of birth
- I am not that old :-)

If anyone tried to read CricketGames.com earlier this weekend and
got the 'this page is not available' message this was due to a major routing failure in
the States (where the pages are located).

I have now had one correct answer to the CricketGames.com Competition to win Internet Test
Cricket. If no-one else gets it right then that person (who has been notified) wins.
One small clue - the answer has nothing to do with cricket.

Discovered some problems with forms on this site not properly submitting. Have
now (hopefully) changed all forms to use a non FrontPage script. If you now get any errors
saying FrontPage Component required please let me know.

In fixing the two above problems I have now removed all reliance on FrontPage
Server Extensions being required. I will still use FrontPage to manage the site but now no
longer have to Publish from it. In future I will use Site Publisher which is much quicker uploading and more efficient at
updating files.

Now that I have been given the nod I can tell you a bit more about
my contract :-) I am working for Empire on the PC version of International Cricket Captain 2000.
Specifically I am working on the network/Internet support mentioned by Brian Walker in the
official forum earlier this week.

Firstly some personal news - I have just accepted a 3 month
contract based down in London which will mean these pages may only get updated at
weekends. More details on the contract when I am given the official nod (it is relevant to
these pages).

Hopefully by now everything is working. I have also discovered a
program for publishing the site which hopefully means I will no longer have to rely on
FrontPage. Have started making use of additional space now available to CricketGames.com
by adding ICC files. Hope to make all ICC2 files available tomorrow.

Finally persuaded CI
Host to create me a new account as the server I was originally allocated seems to be
broken and they still have not fixed it. All this messing trying to get the site working
means I have not had time to do any additions to the site. Hopefully the situation is now
resolved and the pages will be stable. When I first moved to Web 2010 there were initial problems but
once sorted the service was on the whole very good.

Saturday, 5 February 2000

Well so much for the hopeful transparent change of servers. Web 2010 decided to nuke my pages and
only after several emails and expensive trans-atlantic phone calls did they restore the
pages which they claim I asked them to remove which is total rubbish. CI Host then decided to take technical
support to the lowest levels possible by being totally incompetent and breaking my account
for 5 days so I had no access to it. I dread to think of the phone bill for calls to their
so called customer support as emails went totally answered. It is all very well for these
American companies to offer toll-free support but that does not help foreign customers
like me. Surely Internet companies should be able to handle things via e-mail! Even now
the situation is not fully resolved and I'm not sure whether the Internic changes so that
CricketGames.com points to CI Host rather than Web 2010 have been set in motion.

Wednesday, 2 February 2000

CricketGames.com has moved servers. Hopefully the move will have
been transparent to most people. Web 2010
where CricketGames.com has been for the last year only provided 50Mb which was proving
restricting. CI Host where
CricketGames.com is now offers much more space and facilities which I hope to start taking
advantage of soon. One of the consequences of the move is that the Guest Book has been
cleared - maybe this is not a bad thing considering how inappropriate for this site recent
entries have been.

Added a new CricketGames.com Shop that lists
all the cricket games plus some books and videos you can buy over the net. This is as a
result of getting lots of emails asking where to buy certain games often despite the link
being on the relevant game page.

Finally got around to sorting through the masses of emails I had
built up over the last few months. A lot of the Hints 'n' Tips and Wish Lists got rejected
(especially for Cricket World Cup 99) as they were very similar to existing ones.

On the subject of emails the number of what I consider
pointless/irrelevant emails are on the increase. Please read the Feedback
section for more details of which emails I will ignore and why.

Due to the fact there are 2 Playstation games currently under
development I have created a new Playstation Games
section. I have split the Brian Lara Cricket and Shane Warne Cricket '99 pages into PC and
Playstation versions. The Playstation games under development will appear in Games Under Development until they are released.

Updated PBeM - news of 2 new leagues
plus another mention of the 'Tortyfoo Cup' for all ITC PBeM leagues.

Happy New Year, Year 2000 but not Happy New
Millennium (I refuse to follow the crowd and will celebrate the proper start of the
millennium on 31st December 2000) to all readers of CricketGames.com. CricketGames.com has
now been around for 17 months and whilst other cricket computer games sites have come and
gone CricketGames.com is now the only site that is regularly updated. According to the
site stats there are on average 4000 pages requests each day and about 800 unique hits on
this index page each day.